Cesare Zavattini

Unemployed Antonio is elated when he finally finds work hanging posters around war-torn Rome. However on his first day, his bicycle—essential to his work—gets stolen. His job is doomed unless he can find the thief. With the help of his son, Antonio combs the city, becoming desperate for justice.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell

When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Carlo Battisti, Napoleone the Dog, Maria Pia Casilio

A young widow flees from Rome during WWII and takes her lonely twelve-year-old-daughter to her rural hometown but the horrors of war soon catch up with them.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Sophia Loren, Eleonora Brown, Jean-Paul Belmondo

Three tales of very different women using their sexuality as a means to getting what they want.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Aldo Giuffrè

Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Franco Interlenghi, Rinaldo Smordoni, Annielo Mele

Film director Blasetti is looking for a little girl for his new movie. Along with other mothers, Maddelena takes her daughter to Cinecittà, hoping she’ll be selected and become a star. She is ready to sacrifice anything for little Maria.

Dir. Luchino Visconti · With Anna Magnani, Walter Chiari, Tina Apicella

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Emma Gramatica, Francesco Golisano, Paolo Stoppa

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Ludmila Savelyeva

A tribute to Naples, this film presents six episodes: a clown exploited by a gangster, a pizza seller losing her husband’s ring, a child's funeral, a gambler beaten by a kid, a prostitute's unusual wedding, and a "wisdom seller" offering advice.

Dir. Vittorio De Sica · With Silvana Mangano, Sophia Loren, Eduardo De Filippo

An anthology of four comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy: frothy young love and office politics in the big city; milk advertisements that begin to haunt an aging prude; a trophy wife enduring her husband's very public affairs; a lucky ticket-holder at a small town fair.

Dir. Mario Monicelli, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti · With Marisa Solinas, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider

Agnese has many men who woo her and live with her cousin Cesira, who has the opposite problem with men and wishes she would also have men woo her.

Dir. Dino Risi · With Sophia Loren, Franca Valeri, Vittorio De Sica

A lord’s servant, Ali Baba, is sent to retrieve a slave for his master, but ends up on an adventure filled with gold, mischief, love, and forty famous thieves instead.

Dir. Jacques Becker · With Fernandel, Samia Gamal, Dieter Borsche